In flight, a flight crew navigates their aircraft according to a flight plan that is filed with the air traffic control authorities. The flight plan may be manually or electronically loaded into the aircraft's Flight Management System (“FMS”) at the beginning of the flight, prior to departure. Among other things, the flight plan typically includes a plurality of geographic waypoints that define a planned track of the aircraft and the specific times at which the aircraft is to arrive at those waypoints. The flight plan also includes information concerning the availability of runways at the flight's point of origin and destination. Typically, a flight plan is updated via an air traffic control (ATC) clearance message from an ATC authority.
In the process of compiling a flight plan, the air crew is obligated to review daily message traffic referred to as notices to airmen (“NOTAMs”). A NOTAM message is a formatted digital message that is filed with an aviation authority to alert aircraft pilots of any hazards located along their flight plan or at a specific location. The authority in turn provides a means of disseminating relevant NOTAMs to pilots. In the United States, NOTAMs are available at the Federal Aviation Administration's National Airspace System Aeronautical Information Management Enterprise System (NAIMES) PilotWeb NOTAM System located on the internet at https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/distribution/atcscc.html, as well as via a variety of satellite, wireless, VHF, and other uploading sources available to aircraft.
Traditionally, pilots receive multiple NOTAMs in paper or electronic form that must be deciphered and manually evaluated. Information that is relevant to their specific flight plan is then extracted by the pilot and included in the flight plan. Such, paperwork is time consuming and tedious. Further, NOTAMS that have been issued after the flight plan is created are obviously not available to the pilot during the flight planning phase. Therefore, late breaking NOTAM messages may be missed. Late breaking NOTAM updates may be transmitted to the aircraft, by voice, electronic, paper or other form and considered by the pilot in flight or while preparing for departure or while en route. If a NOTAM update is found to be relevant, a decision must then be made concerning whether to modify the flight plan and how to modify the flight plan.
Such a procedure is inefficient and may result in significant heads down time, during which the pilot's attention may be diverted from preparing the aircraft for departure or from flying the aircraft. Therefore, there is a need to improve the NOTAM review process for flight planning. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the exemplary embodiments will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.